From 1953 To 2025

Yesterday, there was Armed Forces Day by the sea and an "East Meets West" cultural event with food in Lancaster Library. Today there was a Vintage Festival, a Norman Festival and Gay Pride in different parts of the District. I am getting onto my computer late in the day.

Poul Anderson's Brain Wave was published in 1953. Brian Aldiss wrote an Introduction to the Science Fiction Master Series edition in 1976. We are now in 2025. That gives us a vast historical perspective. What else happened in 1953?

Stalin died.

Queen Elizabeth II was crowned.

Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing Norgay reached the summit of Everest.

Casino Royale was published.

I was alive but not yet at school.

That is a short and selective list, of course.

Brian Aldiss' introduction reflects the world in 1976. Because they are relevant to the plot of Anderson's novel, he mentions:

therapy

Eastern religions

new religions

drugs

"Karl Marx's prediction that the State would wither away..." 

-Brian Aldiss, Introduction IN Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977), pp. 5-8 AT p. 5.

Aldiss comments that this prediction "...has been revealed in all its foolishness." (ibid.)

This is a common misunderstanding of Marx. His idea was never that States as we know them would wither away. Instead, they had to be overthrown and replaced by a qualitatively different kind of state. Then that state would rapidly make itself redundant and would start to "wither away" almost from its inception. But we do not need to debate that issue further here.

But it is relevant to Brain Wave where, because of a massive increase in human intelligence, familiar States do cease to function/"wither way." Individuals with enhanced intelligence come together to reorganize social activities in everyone's interests as Marx had hoped would/thought could happen as an outcome of struggles first within, but then going beyond, the old order.

In 2025, we still have all the problems.